State Gives 1st-time Felons A Break Non-violent Inmates To Get Out Early

April 30, 1990|By Shirish Date, Sentinel Tallahassee Bureau

TALLAHASSEE — Potential felons take note: If you are thinking of using drugs, stealing a car, forging a check or committing some other non-violent crime in Florida, wait until September.

Starting then, many criminals sent to state prison for the first time will stay barely long enough to meet their cellmates before they're sent home.

That's because the state is changing the way it chooses who gets out of prison early.

Under the new method, about 300 first-time criminals a week will be released almost immediately after beginning their sentences. The reason: to make room for the increasing number of felons entering prisons and to keep violent, chronic criminals behind bars longer.

''If you don't have room for everybody . . . the first-time property offender ought to be released as soon as possible,'' said Guy Revell, chairman of the state parole commission.

Orange Circuit Judge Michael Cycmanick, who jokes about holding sentencing hearings in the afternoon so he can beat the criminals home each night, strongly disagrees.

''I think it's unconscionable,'' Cycmanick said. ''It's a real blow to the law enforcement people, to the prosecutors and the judges.''

The new release plan, created by last year's Legislature and getting tinkered with this session, wasn't meant to dismay the criminal justice community. It was designed to keep in prison as long as possible people like Charlie Street and James Savage, who were released early despite having committed violent crimes.

Street is on trial, accused of killing two police officers in Dade County days after he was freed. Savage murdered a Brevard County woman soon after his early release.

The early-release program keeps the state from violating a federal court order against prison crowding. Although 9,000 new prison beds are scheduled for construction, and another 9,000 are in next year's proposed budget, expected increases in the number of criminals mean those beds will be filled as soon as they are available.

Currently, an inmate is released each time a new one enters the prison system even though the inmate's full sentence hasn't been served.

A computer decides who leaves early based on a formula. About 85 percent of the prisoners automatically get about 90 days deducted for each 30 days served without regard to their criminal histories. The other 15 percent - murderers, rapists, drug traffickers and others serving mandatory minimum sentences - are banned from getting early release credits.

Under the new system, the same 15 percent will still be excluded from early release. But as the remaining 85 percent enter prison, about 850 a week, the seven parole commissioners will review their files and decide if they are dangerous enough to keep imprisoned for the entire length of their sentences.

About a third will fall into that category, commissioners say. Another third, nearly 300 each week, will be set free immediately. The other third will earn gain time based on the current formula.

''We're tired of the early release system we have, and we want to change it,'' said Pete Dunbar, Gov. Bob Martinez' general counsel and a strong proponent of the control release authority, which will be the new name for the parole commission.

''The idea is to get away from automatic, computer-generated gain time,'' Dunbar said. ''We've simply invented, for the time being, a better mousetrap.''

What worries critics of the new plan is the commissioners' caseload: about 1,000 inmates each week, with at least two commissioners examining each file.

In a test run last August, commissioners spent 7.9 minutes per case file.

''I don't know if it's going to be much better, to be frank about it, with that number,'' said state Rep. Bob Sindler, an Apopka Democrat and member of the House Corrections Committee. He doubted that a quick look at a case file will produce much better results than a computer program.

''We're going to be letting some people out who are violent . . . regardless.''

Proposed legislation would add two commissioners to the parole board, and more than double the current 32 parole officers.

State Sen. Larry Plummer, a Miami Democrat and head of the Senate Corrections, Probation and Parole Committee, voted against the measure in his committee. He said he prefers the current method because it keeps available the 400 prison beds that will be tied up in the new weeklong evaluation process.

''It takes time for Revell to process these people, and he doesn't do it better than a computer,'' Plummer said.

Revell said his commission will make mistakes but believes public safety will be better served by selectively releasing non-violent offenders convicted of theft or forgery, rather than those guilty of assault or robbery.

He and other legislative staff members also said a main reason for the new release system is to have a person, rather than a computer program, accountable for the crimes that released prisoners may commit.

''As long as there are not enough beds, somebody's got to take the heat,'' Revell said.